


Uther Remembers.

by Nashira



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2018-10-29 13:37:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10855086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nashira/pseuds/Nashira
Summary: Uther looks back on his life and remembers.





	Uther Remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd. Sorry!

1\. He remembers the way her braids would almost crack like a whip as she turned around too quickly. Usually when he’d said something he was about to wish he had not. Her ruby red lips, swollen from kisses. Eyes so blue that he had never seen anything like them. Not before. Not since.

  


The laughter almost always at his expense, her pleasure at his wounded pride. _Nimueh_. Priestess. Witch. Lover. Friend.

  


Enemy.

  


He remembers golden curls and soft smiles, brown eyes and flawless hands. Gentle laughter, still at his expense, but warmer. Nimueh and Ygraine chatting in a corner instead of assisting him with his paperwork. Friends.

  


He remembers his own son’s blue eyes.

  


_Ygraine’s,_ but not.

  


_Nimueh’s_. Hers, more than his. A shadow of Nimueh’s eye’s and Ygraine’s hair, grace. How had that happened?

  
  
  


2\. Flashes of gold, the shock of cold fingers running along his only barely warmer thigh. The way she dared him with her smiling lips. _It costs her nothing for this, he thinks. She is Priestess. She has no one to answer too._ he thinks. But the closeness costs her. The friendship.

  


He remembers the tears in her eyes as she watched Ygraine fade, as the rage filled his.

  


Her pleas and anger when he said she had murdered Ygraine. Deaf to her reminding him that she had warned. That the price was death for life, that his son the wet nurse was now holding had never meant to be. That if she had known it would be Ygraine...

  


He remembers throwing her out of the castle gates himself, and sending the army off to kill all she ever loved.

  


He can taste her on his tongue still. Hear the girlish giggles and breathless moans as he pulls her needy cunt closer to his mouth, to him, her spread out on the table like a feast of too thin robes and braids and curls, miles of pale skin. Blood red lips and flushed cheeks.

  


He wakes, hard, and curses her name as he comes.

  
  
  


3\. He dreams of apples. Juicy, redder than anything he’d seen. Old ancient tree’s that seem to be older than human race. Older than the Priest’s Eden and still producing apples by the cart. 

  


He remembers sitting on roots that only seem to be comfortable for druids and those of the Old Religion. Except then it was just the religion. Magic was life. Gold eyes didn’t make him flinch.

  


He dreams of golden curls blowing in the rose garden. Pink lips and cheeky jokes hidden under the guise of a demure young woman.

  


He remembers watching the garden from a window and wondering, smiling, as Nimueh and Ygraine took a breath of fresh air, of peace from playing at whatever people wanted them to be. Chasing each other with muddy feet and hair full of leaves and flowers. Falling, giggling, into the puddles from last nights rain.

  


He wakes with the memory of the Isle of the Blessed burning and in ruins.

  


People he once knew dead over the ruins of their beloved home.

  


Uther has no taste for apples any more.

  
  
  


4\. He remembers the way she had argued against it. Against using the magic. He doesn’t want to remember. It had been her fault. She was the treacherous one. Hadn’t she been? _Nimueh_. There was a time when she seemed to be able to hear him, no matter where he was. All he had to do was whisper her name and she would answer, a whisper on the wind, a playful tug of lips and teeth on his earlobe.

  


He remembers the betrayal in her eyes when he had brought Ygraine to the Isle for safe keeping when he had to go to conquer Camelot, and the hurt in her voice.

  


She loved me.

  


_She killed Ygraine for me_.

  


Except did she, really? She had looked as horrified as him. She had barely even looked at the little boy she’d made because Uther had begged, had Gaius beg. She had barely even been able to look at him, though she had yelled at him when he accused her.

  


She had not meant to kill Ygraine. He had never believed it. But twenty years later he could still hear the sting at the accusation in her voice.

  


He was the traitor, not the girl who had given him everything she could.

  


He wishes for death.

  


He goes mad.

  
  
  


5\. Her image creeps in his head. Young. But she was always young, was, still, even when she rose Tristan. When she made his spine crawl with dread. Except now she is as she was, before he was King. Her sharp smiles and predatory looks, sharp kisses and bites, marks along his skin he happily returns to her. So small, against him, yet seemingly tall as a castle. Strong.

He feels her, on his lap, lighter than he remembers. The weight of her, of his sorrows having made her solider in his mind. She’s warm, she always was in her way. He should feel guilty, that he dreams of her. She should be Ygraine. He should have Ygraine. Nothing about this is right, not at all, and he can hardly dare to breathe. 

  


Her lips are real and warm and the paint on them brushes off on his thumb as he traces his fingers over them. Her breasts soft, heavy in his hands as she leans closer. Her hair unbound, his crown half fallen down her forehead. She smiles at him and his heart aches to wish this could be real even as his hands trace down her soft curves. 

  


She has been hard as alabaster. Hater. Traitor. Killer, in his mind for so many years now the contrast of her skin under his fingers to that image is stinging. 

  


What had he done to her?

  


His bare fingers find the soft, wet centre of her and she slides forward onto his hand until his fingers sink into her. Nimueh’s eyes fall close and she moans lowly, rocks against him seeking more and he rolls them over, kisses along her throat. When he looks up, the eyes are brown, skin cold, hair like whispers of finely spun gold.

  


‘What have you done to us?’ Ygraine says, but it is Nimueh’s voice that says this last, the purr in her voice like the first time she growled his name in anger. ‘ _Uther Pendragon,’_ and Uther never wakes again, just screams fruitlessly in his mind.


End file.
